Why I love Hanoi

Have I mentioned yet that I'm falling in love with Hanoi? Oh, there's plenty here to frustrate and annoy you, just as there always is when you fall in love with a person, but the compensations Hanoi offers are numerous and beguiling. Like Paris, a city near the top of many people's favorite city list, including mine, Hanoi is built on a human scale, its oldest and most central area rising to no more than five or six stories except for here and there a modern skyscraper serving as a landmark and navigational aid. No concrete canyons blotting out sun and sky in this city.

Despite the crazy traffic, Hanoi's a very walkable city. Once you gain a little faith in the system you find yourself stepping out into the path of oncoming motorbikes with a carelessness you once would have thought impossible and wading confidently through the honking swarm with your senses alert but your mind mostly on other matters. Like Paris, Hanoi is a well-orchestrated balance of wide boulevards connected by smaller—tiny, even—streets and alleyways. Instead of segregated rich/poor neighborhoods, you find upscale shops and salons rubbing elbows everywhere with grubby soup kitchens and corner grocery/bait shops.

I'm sorry I wasn't here ten years ago. I was told by an American who WAS here back then that you saw very few automobiles in the streets and bicycles outnumbered the motorbikes. Back then people traveling together or with baggage hired cyclos—those big tricycles with a bench seat in the back and a cyclo driver up front pedaling and steering. Nowadays the few remaining cyclos mostly just provide tour rides for package tourists stopping at one of the big tourist hotels. Still, from my point of view, it's a big plus today that two-wheeled vehicles far outnumber four-wheeled ones. Autos generally have to find parking off the street. One of the things that makes Hanoi so walkable is that the curbs are not lined with parked cars and parking meters. You can cross a street anywhere.

I also like the culture of xe om in which you can quickly grab a ride anywhere you happen to be—cheaply and without a phone call. The driver's costs are minimal (bike, 2 helmets, gas) and the price is strictly and patently a matter of supply and demand, where the supply seems inexhaustible.

Hanoi's low cost of living is one of its charms that lured me here in the first place, but it's one that's deceptive. It's possible to live ridiculously cheaply here, but once you begin seeking out the comforts of home instead of looking for replacement comforts, you can quickly find yourself paying MORE to recreate your old life in Hanoi than it would have cost you to stay home. For the equivalent of $5-$10 I'm sure you can buy as much food here as you have strength to carry home from the market. The problem is recognizing it as food when you see it and figuring out what the hell to do with it when you get it home. To me it looks like a bunch of noxious weeds, tree roots, and the contents of Uncle Frank's bug-zapper. But fill up your shopping basket just one time with more familiar fare like Spanish olives, salted cashews, Edam cheese, virgin olive oil, and Fuji apples and you'll be longing for the low, low prices at the Whole Earth store in Palm Springs.

As time goes by I discover more and more of those special little cafes, park bench views, unique architectural flourishes, and romantic tree-shaded streets that make you fond of living in a place. And then there's the people. I'll save my elegy on the Vietnamese for another time and just mention—I may have already—that no teacher I've talked to here who has taught elsewhere would trade their Vietnamese students for any other students in the world.